Is soup good for you? Maybe not, according to the blog that my gym runs.

Normally, when people ask if something’s good for you, the question’s usually something a little more pressing. Is revenge good for you? Is treating thrush with fruit yoghurt good for you? Is going on an OKCupid date with a man who calls Run For Your Wife his favourite film good for you?

But no. The blog asked what turns out to be an incredibly easy question. Yes, soup is good for you. Eating stuff is good for you – pretty much essential, I’d say – but eating stuff gets a bit more difficult the more stupid questions you ask about foodstuffs that have been around for thousands (if not millions) of years.

I was surprised by the sudden flare of fury that the blog inspired. After all, its authors have pulled stunts like this before: a post that claims you should drop hormonal contraception, because it’s ruining your diet? Check. An author who claims that ‘there is plenty of evidence to show that you are better off being overweight or obese instead of being thin’? Recipes for stuffed courgette to kill your pizza cravings? Check.

But claiming that tinned soup is an unhealthy lunch? I’m sorry, but if that post makes the grade then I dread to think what kind of screwed-up self-hating articles got rejected by the people running the blog. Plus, I’m seriously running out of things to eat!

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Virago, I wrote about my favourite book of theirs from the last ten years and its tribute to the NHS: Sarah Waters’ ghost story, The Little Stranger.

Although I had already of heard of Sarah Waters (thanks to her infamous bodice-rippers) The Little Stranger was my introduction to her work. But the novel I got was far from the one I expected. Instead of a worldly-wise lesbian or a chain-smoking Wren, the novel’s protagonist was a male doctor – likeable at first, but gradually unpeeled to reveal a cold and controlling character.

As a ghost story it utterly succeeds, but the beauty of the novel for me was that it also reflected perfectly the inequality, war trauma and grief that shaped British society in the 1930s. Virago published The Little Stranger in 2009, the same year that Sir David Nicholson announced that the NHS needed to make cuts of £15-20 billion by 2012. Waters’ novel – though far from political – showed the suffering that Dr Faraday’s poorer patients faced when they couldn’t pay for the doctor. It chimed perfectly with the moment I read it because the NHS that the novel so longed for is now being quietly dismantled. The Little Stranger gave me a new appreciation for the role of the doctor in contemporary life, as well as excitement to dive into Waters’ backlist.